Amazon taps its SocialBot challenge to boost conversational AI

Published August 20, 2021

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An article in Venture Beat reported that a team of students from UB finished third in Amazon’s annual Alexa Prize SocialBot Grand Challenge. The team was led by computer science and engineering professor Rohini Srihari.

The Grand Challenge “​​promotes research into coherence, context awareness, fluency of response, and other areas fundamental to the future of conversational AI,” according to the article. “Participating university teams design social bots for Alexa-enabled devices and can validate their ideas by directly engaging with Amazon’s millions of Alexa customers.

UB's team earned a $50,000 prize for its PROTO bot. First place went to the team from Czech Technical University and the Stanford University team earned second place.

Read the story here.